Video: Dragging and dropping layers

In this movie, I'm going to introduce the White wall into the background of the artwork. But this time instead of copying and pasting, we'll take advantage of drag and drop. We'll start by looking at how you drag and drop between two windows when you can see both windows at the same time. So I'm going to go up to the Window menu, choose the Arrange command and choose Float in Window. And that way I have the White wall image floating independently with my layered composition in the background. I'll go ahead and zoom out here a little bit so that I can take in the entire image.

Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Fundamentals is a concise and focused introduction to the key features in Photoshop, presented by long-time lynda.com author and Adobe veteran Deke McClelland. This course covers the image editing process from the very beginning and progresses through the concepts and techniques that every photographer or graphic designer should know. Deke explains digital imaging fundamentals, such as resolution vs. size and the effects of downsampling. He explains how to use layers to edit an image nondestructively and organize those edits in an easy-to-read way, and introduces techniques such as cropping, adjusting brightness and contrast, correcting and changing color, and retouching and healing images. These lessons distill the vast assortment of tools and options to a refined set of skills that will get you working inside Photoshop with confidence.

Dragging and dropping layers

In this movie, I'm going to introduce the White wall into the background of the artwork.But this time instead of copying and pasting, we'll take advantage of drag and drop.We'll start by looking at how you drag and drop between two windows when you cansee both windows at the same time.So I'm going to go up to the Window menu, choose the Arrange command andchoose Float in Window.And that way I have the White wall image floating independently with my layeredcomposition in the background.I'll go ahead and zoom out here a little bit so that I can take in the entire image.

And now, once again switch to the Move tool.And by the way, when I say the shortcut for the Move tool is a V key, there areno modifier keys involved.You just press V by itself.Now if you're working along with me, you move your cursor into the Stucco imageand then drag the image into the other piece of artwork and drop it into place.The problem is notice that the Stucco is not centered with respect to therest of the artwork.Well you can center it using a special trick.So I'll go ahead and undo the modification by pressing Ctrl+Z or Command+Z onthe Mac, but it doesn't seem to work and that's because the White wall imageover here is active.

Nothing has been done in that image.The change happened over in the other file.So I will click inside that image window to make it active.Then I can go up to the Edit menu and choose the Undo command or as I say, pressCtrl+Z on the PC or Command+Z on the Mac.Now I'll show you how to center the image on the drop.It's a little tricky, but once you understand how it works, it's a great trick.I'll go ahead and click inside the White wall.jpeg image, to make it active again.Then I'll drag the artwork over into the other image file.

And before I release, I still have my mouse button down.I'll press and hold the Shift key, keep that key down and then release.And notice that the White wall is centered in its new home.It's hard to see that it's centered because the layer is actually larger thanthe canvas, the canvas being the physical perimeter of the image.If I click inside the image to make it active and then I zoom out a little bit,I can find how big the artwork is by going up to the Edit menu and choosing theFree Transform command, or once again, you can press Ctrl+T or Command+T on the Mac.

And notice, sure enough, this bounding box shows me that the wall is centered.So again, when you're dragging and dropping, if you press the Shift key on thedrop, you center the layer into place.Also worth noting, however, is the fact that a layer or any one layer can belarger than the image.So you do have some wiggle room when you're working inside of Photoshop.All right, I'm just going to press the Escape key to escape out of the FreeTransform mode because it just so happens, I don't want to scale this layer.Now, I'm going to get rid of this floating window here by going up to the Windowmenu, choosing the Arrange command and choosing Consolidate All to Tabs.

And now I want you to notice, just for the sake of confirmation, we have a newlayer here inside the Layers panel.However, I want to show you one more way to perform a drag and drop just so you know.So I'm going to press the Backspace key or the Delete key on the Mac, whichautomatically gets rid of the active layer.Now I'm going to switch back to that White wall.jpg file.Now press Ctrl+0 or Command+0 on a Mac, to fit the image to the screen.When you're working in a consolidated view, in other words, you can't see theother image, the drop image, you can only see its tab, here is what you do.

You drag the image as before, you drag it up to the tab and you hold for a second.You have to hold on that tab until the other image comes into view.Then you move your cursor back into the image window and you drop, and thatallows you to perform you a drag and drop between tabbed windows.What about if you want to go ahead and center the image as you drop it?Well then, I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac once again, and switchback to the White wall image.You do the same thing, that is, you drag the image all the way up to the tab, waitfor it to switch to the other image, move your cursor back into the imagewindow, keep that cursor down, press and hold the Shift key and then release, andyou'll go ahead and center that wall into place.

And again, you can confirm the centering by pressing Ctrl+T or Command+T on the Mac.And sure enough, we have a centered bounding box, so I can press the Escape key toabandon the Free Transform mode.And those are your various ways to drag and drop images into alayered composition.

Q: When I double click the welcome.psd file included with the exercise files, I get the following error message:

"Some text layers contain fonts that are missing. These layers will need to have the missing fonts replaced before they can be used for vector based output."

Unlike the TIF and JPEG files which display and open correctly, all the icons for PSD files are blank but other than the welcome.psd file, they seem to open correctly without the error message. Is this a problem that I should address (perhaps re-download the files or find the missing fonts)?

A: The TIFF and JPEG files are flat, so they don't contain fonts and the operating system can interpret them (and generate thumbnails) without help from Photoshop. The PSD files have two issues:

First, they may contain editable text complete with font info. The files are designed with fonts that ship with Photoshop, so you don't get error messages, but Adobe sells some versions of Photoshop without fonts. This may be your issue.

Second, the PSD files contain no flat previews. This makes for smaller files, but it means the operating system, Mac or Windows, cannot generate previews. That won't effect your experience in Photoshop, but it does mean you can't see the file until you open it.

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